Telephone Tag
by ExpositionFairy
Summary: Alan and Roy have a long history of calling each other at long hours. Set within the "Symbiosis" 'verse.
1. Close Calls

_1982_

It's almost 2:30 in the morning by time Alan makes it back home, but he's never felt _less_ tired in his life. He's downright wired, as a matter of fact, still running high on adrenaline and sheer disbelief at what he'd involved himself in, never mind that they'd succeeded. He can't even imagine the three-ring circus that work is going to be on Monday, and against his better nature he can't _wait _to see it.

_I just helped a guy commit enough felonies to land us in Club Fed for the next two years, _Alan thinks for the hundredth time, still trying to get a handle on it in his head, to pound it in like a nail. _And I don't even _like_ him._

He wonders if that's true, though, anymore.

The message indicator light on his answering machine is blinking rapidly, and Alan raises an eyebrow. Unless it's work-related, the only person who ever really leaves him messages is Lora, and he's been with her all night. Curious, he crosses the living room to the end table, tossing his blazer onto the couch as he goes. _If it's Jay calling to tell me about the access restrictions, I'm going to laugh until I die._

When he hits play, however, the voice on the tape is _definitely _not that of Jay, the head of his department.

_"Hey, Alan, it's Roy. I'm sorry, I know it's late and you're probably either out with Lora or asleep…"_

Underneath his obvious attempt to sound casual and cheerful as usual, Roy sounds shaken. Alan can hear it in his voice even over the ambient noise of wherever he's calling from and the scratch of the answering-machine tape. He frowns, brows knitting.

_"—n't want to worry you but I got in a little bit of a fender-bender driving back from the movies tonight and I'm kind of stuck at the USCMC ER, even though I TOLD the paramedics I was fine, I just bumped my head a little, but they wouldn't listen. Anyway I'm fine, if you're busy I can take a cab home, the nurse just wouldn't leave me alone until I called someone…"_

Alan's grabbing his keys and his blazer again before Roy's even finished talking to the tape, wondering half-seriously if something weird is going on with the zodiac tonight. It's beside the point, anyway. _'Take a cab home' indeed_, he thinks, shaking his head. _From _downtown_?_ _You live in _Burbank_, fool._

* * *

He's a little worried that Roy will have taken the cab anyway by the time he gets to the ER. When Alan walks into the waiting room, though, he's there, sitting in between a sleeping drunk and a nervous-looking mother with a two-year-old on her lap, folding one of the sheets of his discharge instructions into a paper airplane. There's a taped bandage on his forehead, and he looks tired and uncomfortable.

"Hey, Roy."

Roy looks up with a lopsided little smile, looking slightly abashed. "I told you I was gonna take a cab…"

"You were gonna take a cab 15 miles, at 3 a.m., with a concussion." Alan counters, hands on his hips. "Give me a break. Lora would smack you."

"Hey, I don't have a concussion," Roy protests. "I told you on the message, I just have a bump on the head and maybe a little bit of whiplash. I'm _fine._" He tries to stand up to prove it, but winces and falters a bit, one hand going to his head. "Oog."

Alan rests a hand on his shoulder to steady him, frowning and giving him the hairy eyeball until he's sure Roy isn't going to keel over on him. "Come on, Roy. Let's get out of here before someone comes in shooting."

Roy smiles gratefully to him. "Sounds like a plan."

* * *

"So what happened, anyway?" Alan asks as they drive down I-5. "You're the safest driver in LA, have you ever actually _been_ in an accident before? You got the other guy's insurance and contact info, right?"

Roy shifts uncomfortably in his seat, rubbing at his neck. "…it was my fault," he mumbles softly, shoulders hunching. "I don't know what happened."

Alan blinks, frowning and glancing over at Roy briefly. "What do you mean?"

"I just…I don't know, okay? I was heading back home from seeing the 9:00 showing of _Conan the Barbarian _over in Monterey Park and all of a sudden everything just…just _went sideways_ on me, and the next thing I knew the guy behind me slammed into me and my head bounced off the steering wheel."

"Well that's what you get for staying up all night every night the way you do…Jesus, Roy, you're just lucky you weren't on the freeway, falling asleep at the wheel like that." Alan hears the edge creeping into his voice and feels guilty for it, but he can't help it. Roy's become like a little brother to him in the last few months since they became cube neighbors, and the thought of him getting seriously hurt disturbs him.

"I didn't fall asleep at the wheel, dammit," Roy mutters, a little sulkily. "I told you, I don't _know _what happened to me there. And anyway, _you're _one to talk, you sure seem pretty wide awake for 4 in the morning. I bet you were working, and I bet Lora was annoyed."

For three minutes or so, neither of them says anything, Alan driving and Roy fidgeting with his seatbelt and occasionally wincing when he's sure Alan isn't looking. Finally, Alan breaks the silence. "So was it any good?"

Roy stares over at him, boggled. "The accident?"

"The _movie, _you dingbat."

"OH! Yeah, it was great," Roy answers, and Alan smiles slightly when he sees Roy's own smile return to him. "Total B-movie but a hell of a lot of fun. You should take Lora, she'd love it. Oh, man, and there was this _great _trailer attached for a movie called _The Thing _that's coming out next month…we've totally got to go see it together."

"You're on," Alan replies, grinning a bit, thinking that maybe he'll even invite Flynn, provided he promises to behave himself.

"So how'd it go with Dillinger, anyway?" Roy asks, switching topics. "Are you still locked out?"

Alan's grin widens. It may be 4:00 in the morning, but the thought of seeing Roy's reaction to the the tale of the Great Encom Caper of '82 makes him feel giddy and hyper all over again. "Oh, boy…wait until we get to your place, buddy," he says. "Have I got a story for you."


	2. Altar Calls

_1983_

Roy's first response to hearing the telephone ringing is to pull his pillow over his head and wait for it to stop. It doesn't.

He flails an arm blindly toward the nightstand until he feels what he hopes is the phone and drags it over to him, mumbling a half-intelligible "H'lo?" into it before he realizes that the phone is still ringing and he's talking to the alarm clock. He groans, squinting at the numbers-Roy's_pretty_ sure that's either an 8 or a 9, but without his glasses and with his eyes still partially glued shut with sleep it's hard to tell. _Who the hell is calling me at 8 or 9 am on a _Saturday_, and where can I hire a hit man?_

Finally, Roy manages to grab the phone and pick it up before the answering machine clicks on. His greeting this time is considerably grouchier. "Whaddaya want…?"

"I knew you'd forget to set your alarm," Alan's voice answers from the other end of the line, sounding both mildly exasperated and entirely too chipper for this Godless hour.

Roy feels the corner of his left eye twitching as he sits up, rubbing blearily at his face with his free hand. "Alan. It is a Saturday. Why the blessed, gracious hell would I set my alarm on a Saturday. Do you have _any idea_ what time it is?"

"Yep. It is 9:08 a.m., and more to the point it is Saturday, April 6th, meaning you're meeting Lora in exactly one hour and seven minutes."

"…wait, I am?" Roy runs a hand through his hair and reaches for his glasses, trying to remember when they'd set that up, and what the heck he's supposed to be meeting her for. When he does, the urge to bury himself underneath the pillow returns with a vengeance. "_Oh God._"

"One hour and three minutes now, and at least 20 of that's going to be getting from your place out to Wilshire, provided the traffic gods love you. I'd get moving, if I were you."

"Can't you tell her I'm sick?" Roy pleads.

"Not a chance." Alan retorts. "You are my best man and you are not weaseling out of this. If _I_ had to get fitted for a tux, so do you. You're lucky it's Lora who's taking you; _I_ had to deal with Flynn. Who, I might add, has promised that he will see you put in one of the bridesmaid's dresses if you refuse to wear a tux, and you know how completely hopeless I am at stopping him. So man up and get out of bed, Roy, you're down to an hour."

* * *

"For Pete's sake, Roy, will you stop fidgeting?" Lora chides, doing her best to give him what she hopes is a stern expression, though it's hard to stop herself from giggling. "What are you, twelve?"

Roy answers with such a forlorn, woebegotten look that Lora actually does giggle. She can't help it. He just looks too _cute, _standing on the platform in his half-fitted tuxedo with the sleeves completely covering his hands and that crazy mop of curly blonde hair. He really does look like a kid who's been shanghai'd into playing dress-up by an older sister, and before she can stop herself she's reaching up to straighten his lapels.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," Roy mutters.

"Oh, stop. You can so, you know perfectly well how much this means to Alan. And the sooner you knock it off with the fidgeting, the sooner we can get out of here and go grab a French dip at Phillipe's." She pats his shoulder and smiles, resisting the ever-present urge to ruffle his hair.

Roy looks down, fidgeting with the cuffs of his jacket again despite Lora's admonitions. "I still don't get why he asked _me_ to be his best man and not Flynn."

Lora sighs, shaking her head, though she's still smiling. "Because Kevin asked Alan to be _his _best man. And because you're his best friend, Roy, and have been for longer than he's even really known Kevin. So knock that off, too, willya?" She smacks him playfully on the shoulder for emphasis.

"Yes, ma'am," Roy replies, finally smiling now himself…and oh God, is he _blushing?_

By the time they're done with this appointment, Lora thinks, she's going to have to make one with the dentist. For cavities.


End file.
